


You'll kill me, if you stop or Never stop, even if it kills me

by fineandwittie



Series: Look me in the face, hold my gaze [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-it fic, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Oliver hurts real pretty, Prompt Fill, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, but no more than in the book, pain and suffering, possibly vore ideation, request fic, this will hurt before it gets better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-11 00:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13512930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: A fix-it fic that should give our darling boys a happy ending.Oliver isn't handling life well, so Liz makes an executive decision to fix it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladylolabean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylolabean/gifts).



> Unbeta'd. Sorry for typos.

The day I called Elio, I spent most of the afternoon crying. I couldn’t control the wrenching sobs that felt ripped from my body. Elizabeth rocked me in her arms for hours as we sprawled across our living room floor.

I hoped, prayed, wished for it all to go away. To fade into a memory that wouldn’t dog my steps for every day of the rest of my life. And yet I never wanted it to stop. I couldn’t bear it to continue, but refused to even attempt to release it.

When the tears finally dried, I was shaken, hollowed out. I felt like I imagine an echo does, a mere shadow of a life that reflected not who I was, but what was required of me. 

I had an apartment in the city, a teaching position at Columbia, a fiancee. I was living the American Dream. I felt like I was sleepwalking through it. I mimed living and spent my time in memories.

In my memory, I could still hold Elio in my arms, still run my fingers through his hair, still taste his peach on my tongue. 

And yet, no one seemed to notice any difference. Was I that good of an actor? Or was everyone else as asleep as I was?

Liz was the only one who knew. Who saw what was happening to me. 

By June it had grown so bad that I found myself wandering down by wharfs after I’d left campus one day. I looked up at the great bridges that connected Manhattan with everything else. They were beautiful in that military-industrial way that infrastructure can be. Arching so sleekly above the water. So high up.

I wondered what a fall from such a height would feel like, the rush of wind in my face, the impact of the water, the weightlessness, before I caught myself. The thought wouldn’t leave. Would anyone miss me? Would it even matter? Elio was world away and had likely forgotten all about me by now. Liz might care, but she’d be fine without me. My parents would hardly notice. They’d care more about the scandal. What would it feel like to be...not here anymore? 

Nausea rolled in my guts. I was contemplating throwing myself off a bridge and it terrified me.

And not in that idle way people sometimes contemplate would suicide might feel like. But genuinely. Earnestly. It would make the Dream stop. Make the pain, the bone deep longing, end. 

I went home immediately, my hands shaking and my breath short. Liz took one look at the chalky white of my face and pushed me into an armchair. 

“What’s wrong?”

I told her. She inhaled a shaky breath and dropped into the seat across from me. Her eyes were terrified and her face nearly as pale as mine.

“Oliver…is it…that is…are things really that bad for you?”

I couldn’t look at her, not while having this conversation, so I turned my face away and tried to conjure up a smile. I doubt I succeeded. “No…Not…It wasn’t…”

But she was shaking her head. “Please. Don’t lie to me, not about this. Please.”

I swallowed. My throat felt raw, like I’d been screaming, and my voice when it came was hoarse. “I…I feel like I’m drowning, Liz. I feel like there isn’t enough air for me to breath and nothing for me to grab onto to pull myself to shore. Elio…Something inside me changed, fundamentally during those short weeks I spent in Italy. I can’t… My life…it’s nothing. It means nothing, without him now. I can’t stand how much…just doing simple, mundane things makes my chest ache with the lack of him. I can’t buy cigarettes, or listen to music. I can’t discuss literature or art or archeology or philosophy, but his ghost is clinging to my skin. I’m not sure how much more of it I can survive, Liz. I can’t…”

She bit back a sob, but I still couldn’t look at her. I’d never said something so selfish to anyone before. I’d never been so exposed to anyone before, except Elio. I felt like someone had reached inside my chest and scraped out my insides with a rusty knife. 

I wasn’t sure anything could make this better. I wasn’t even sure that there was anything better for me. It seemed like everything was only getting worse. 

The one who said that time heals all wounds ought to have been wrapped into barbed wire. Maybe then he would have understood my wounds.

“Oliver, this can’t go on.”

I nodded. “And yet. There’s nothing else for me to do, Liz.”

She huffed out an sharp breath. “Go back to him.”

My gaze snapped to her. She looked earnestly back. “What?”

“Oliver, you’re nearly suicidal with missing him. The easiest solution is to go back to him. I’m certain he’d take you back.”

I thought about buying a plane ticket and just flying back to Italy everyday since I’d arrived back, but hearing Liz say it out loud made it suddenly a real possibility. A possible impossibility.

I swallowed hard against the thickness in my throat. “I can’t just…leave.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Why not? We’re not getting married. You could teach anywhere. Your Italian is worlds better than it was when you left for Bergamo last time. You could get a job teaching there or anywhere, really. You haven’t been on speaking terms with your parents since before you left. So go.”

I sat, frozen, staring at her. She made it sound so easy. She made it sound inevitable. I couldn’t move. My limbs weren’t responding to my vague thoughts of standing. My body felt a bit like a puppeteer had tangled up my strings.

She sighed and stood. 

Months ago, I put Elio’s phone number on the table next to our phone. I’d never moved it and neither had Liz. Now, she picked it up and then the receiver and dialed. 

My blood turned to ice as I watched her call the Perlman’s summer home. There was a chill in my bones, fear that Elio would answer or that he wouldn’t, fear that Pro would tell her no or that he’d say yes. I was afraid of all the world, suddenly, and wanted nothing more than to vanish. Barring that I’d have settled for crawling under my duvet and never coming out again.

“Ciao, Professore. Questa è l'unica frase che posso dire in italiano. These are the only sentences I can say. Parli inglese? Do you speak English?” 

I hadn’t realized she spoke any Italian. Her accent was good. The cold was abating, but numbness seemed to be settling in its place.

A pause. “Oh good. My name is Elizabeth Bergson. I’m a very good friend of Oliver’s. We were engaged to be married for a short while…No. No, he’s not injured. It’s only…Look, he told me that you were aware of his feelings toward your son, Elio…Yes, he told me. Showed me that photograph you sent him. Look, Professor Perlman. I’m not going to be coy with you. Could Oliver come and stay with you this summer? I know that you host a resident every summer and I’m sure they’re probably already lined up, but…Oh, well…Oliver isn’t…He’s sitting right next to me. I’m just not certain he’s…up for this conversation. He hasn’t been handling things well. Has Elio been handling things?” She paused and listened, nodding occasionally. “Alright. And he’s still…Yes, Oliver as well.”

Then she turned and offered me the phone. I stared at it in her hand for a moment before meeting her gaze. Her expression demanded that I take it, so I did. I brought it up to my ear and heard Pro greet me. 

“Il Couboi. Your friend said you are not…doing well? What’s wrong? Why have you not called before?”

His concern was so obvious in his voice that it cut. I couldn’t quite prevent my voice from breaking. “I’m alright. I just…I miss Elio. I miss you all, very much.”

“Well then. You must come and stay. At least for the summer. For as long as you like. Oliver, we were not exaggerating when we told you that you were welcome whenever you wanted for however long you wanted. Please. Come and stay. Elio would be…more than thrilled to see you. He…misses you quite fiercely. He has been even more reclusive than usual since you left. Not even Marzia can coax him out.”

Was Elio no longer sleeping with Marzia then? Did I still have a chance? Was Liz right? Could I just…uproot myself and go back to Italy?

“Do you mean it? I wouldn’t want to be a burden to your—“

“Bah!” He sounded like he was making some sort of expansive hand gesture. “You are one of us. If you and Elio…find your fairytale, who am I to stand in your way? You are welcome here, _Ulliva_.”

I was crying now, silently, the tears scorching my cheeks. “Thank you. Thank you so much. Grazie.”

“Good. Good. I will tell Annella and Mafalda that you are coming within the week. Manfredi will pick you up from the train station…Today is Tuesday? He will be there on Saturday to get you. Make sure you are there to be gotten, yes? We will see each other on Saturday. Later.” 

I laughed helplessly, crying and laughing and crying. Elizabeth took the receiver from my hand and hung up the phone. “See? That wasn’t so hard. When are you leaving?”

I looked up at her. Suddenly, the entire world felt new and so incredibly fragile. I could destroy it all with a glance. “Friday. He’s sending Manfredi, his driver, to pick me up on Saturday from the train station.”

Her brows twitched into a small frown. “Driver?”

I hummed agreement and struggled to get my limbs to respond. The numbness had been replaced by a rubbery feeling. Hysteria and exhaustion were close enough for me to touch, but I felt buoyant. “Didn’t I mention? The Perlmans have a driver, a gardener, and a housekeeper.”

Her eyebrows rose. I finally stood. I was aimless. There were a hundred things I needed to do, starting with notifying Columbia that I would be away for at least the summer and ending with packing. I wandered around the living room, going in no particular direction. I was drunk on life, but pain clung to me like an oil slick. Slippery and ever present, even if you can’t quite see it from this angle or that. It lingered in my limbs and at the back of my throat. 

Pro wasn’t going to tell Elio I was coming. Would Elio be pleased? Would he want to see me? Had I hurt him too badly for him to forgive? Did he even care? 

I moved to pass Elizabeth and she stopped me with a hand on my chest. “It’ll be okay. This will be good.” She smiled and pulled me into a hug.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unedited. I just wrote it and now I'm posting it. I apologies for typos. I'll edit it tomorrow evening, hopefully.

When I stepped off the train in B, after an excruciating 9 hour flight and an even worse train trip, I could have quite happily walked to the nearest fountain and drowned myself in it. That would certainly have been more pleasant than the churning queasy feeling that had sat in my gut since I bought the ticket over. My skin felt too tight, stretched too far across my bones and liable to tear open at any moment. 

Manfredi was waiting for me, waving lazily from the edge of the platform. I hefted my duffle and lifted my case, before slowly making my way over. He took the duffle from me and we dumped it all into the boot of the Perlmans’ little FIAT. 

I greet him with a smile, but couldn’t muster the will to actually open my mouth and talk. I was bone-weary, but it had nothing to do with the journey here. Rather, I simply didn’t know how much longer I could stand on the edge of the precipice without tipping over into it. It seemed to me then that I’d been standing on the edge looking down into the very heart of my own fears for days, weeks, months. 

It had been nearly a year since I’d seen them all last. Since I’d held Elio in my arms and kissed his gaping mouth. It had been a little more than six months since I’d heard his voice. 

What-Ifs marched like guerrilla soldiers through my brain, liable to break ranks and attack at any moment. What if he was with Marzia for good now? What if he hated me because of that phone call or because I’d left him or because I’d taken him into my bed knowing I would leave? What if he greeted me as though I was no one or anyone, just another dinner drudge? What if he had a boyfriend by now? What if we crashed into one another like we’d done the previous summer only to fall apart in the face of the banality of life?

That, I considered, would be worst of all. To be given everything my soul demanded, but be unable to sustain it. I had thought of little else since getting on the plane in New York. I should have been considering my future or what the hell I thought I was doing, but I was suspended in stasis. I couldn’t move forward because I didn’t know what direction to move in. Toward Elio? With Elio? Or away again? 

The car bumped up the Perlmans’ drive before I even registered we’d neared the property. I tensed as the car rolled to a stop, but Elio didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight.

For a moment, all the what-if and the nightmares came crashing in on me and I couldn’t breath. But Pro stepped out from the open doorway and met me as I stumbled from the car. “Il Couboi! Benvenuto! Welcome!” He pulled me into a hug. “I sent Elio over to Marzia’s this morning. He doesn’t know you’re coming yet.”

And I caught a breath. He didn’t know. He hadn’t stayed away on purpose. My hands trembled from the backwash of adrenaline and I tried to force a shaky smile. Pro just shook his head.

“Come. I wish to speak with you before Elio returns.”

I moved to grab my luggage, but he waved me away from it. Anchise had come out of the house and he and Manfredi each took a bag. Mafalda met me at the door and pulled me into another hug. “Ben tornato, Ulliva. Welcome back.”

I returned her embrace and then Annella’s, trying not to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time my mother had hugged me like this. My father never hugged anyone. I couldn’t fathom growing up in a family like this, so open and accepting, so affectionate. 

Pro laughed, an oddly joyous sound, and motioned me into his office. “Sit, sit. Mafalda left you some apricot juice.” He poured us both glasses. “I am very glad you are back, Oliver, and I don’t want to…make things worse, but there are some things we need to discuss before you…settled into Elio’s life again.”

I sat gingerly on the couch, clutching reflexively at my glass. I didn’t even bother raising it to my lips. My throat was too tight to swallow. I nodded at him. “Alright.” I sounded hoarse again.

“Elio was accepted at three separate music conservatories. One in America, one in England, and one in France. He hasn’t made his decision yet, though the deadline is coming up at the end of the week. He _is_ going to university... Do you understand me?”

I wasn’t sure that I did understand him. Of course, Elio was going to college. He had a brilliant mind and a gifted ear. He played so beautifully that it would be a crime to let him languish somewhere, when he had the opportunity for training.

I frowned at Pro. “You know, I’m not sure I do. Where did you expect him to go in the fall, if not to college?”

His face was very still for a moment. “To New York, with you.”

I blinked at him stupidly for a moment before gaping. “What?”

“I am…concerned that Elio might insist on returning with you to New York when you go back to teach your fall semester. Without considering things properly. Especially if you…were eager for him to accompany you.”

I shook my head. Paused. Shook it again. “No. Pro…Samuel, I don’t think you understand. I came, fully prepared to uproot my entire life for him. If he wants to go to the Conservatoire de Paris, I will follow him there and learn to speak French. Hell, if he wanted to attend the Moscow Conservatory, I’d follow him behind the Iron Curtain. I didn’t come here to convince him to be with me. I came here to convince him to let me be with him. Do you see?”

Pro was nodding, the gleam back in his eye. “Good. Good. Although, put your mind at rest on that last score at least. He had no interest in learning another language. Three is quite enough, as he pointed out when he was compiling his application lists.”

I smiled hesitantly at that. Elio would have picked up Russian as easily as everything else he put his mind to, of that I had no doubt, though I was glad he wasn’t considering it.

“And the other thing…I…”He stopped and took a sip of his juice, as though to prepare himself for whatever he wanted to say next. I struggled, in turn, to prepare myself for the killing blow. He wouldn’t have invited me here to forbid Elio and I from… Would he? “I am so pleased that Elio has found someone who loves him as much as you do, Oliver. I am happy that you have found your way to us. We all love you. Never doubt it. But…I understand how difficult it can be…to make the choice you are making. You are both still very young and I’m concerned that you don’t fully understand the scope of that choice. What you will be giving up.”

I laughed, hoarse and bitter-edged. “I am not so young as all that, Pro. I know what I am giving up. I know how hard it will be. I was living in New York in ‘69 and remember the Stonewall Riots. But I also know what I am gaining, if Elio choses to take me back. You’re worried that one of us will want children, later? Or about that virus everyone is whispering about? I’m clean. I got tested the day I bought my ticket out here. I don’t know about Elio, but I have no intention of ever sleeping with anyone but him again. I’ve hardly slept with anyone since…I left. I couldn’t stomach…any of it. As to the children, there are ways around it. I have a friend back home. A lesbian, who would most likely be willing to help us with that…she and her partner. But none of it seems as important as the thought of being allowed to share the entire rest of my life with your son.”

Finally, Pro smiled, wide and genuine. He opened his arms. “Well then, welcome to the family, Oliver.”

I stood, trying to calm my raging pulse when a door slammed and footsteps came thundering down the hall. “Papa, Matteo said he saw—“ Elio himself skidded to a stop in the doorway and froze when he saw me.

His eyes immediately welled with tears and his mouth dropped open. The desire to kiss him burned through me, hot and overwhelming, and I made an aborted move toward him, but stopped. Not sure of my welcome. Not sure of anything at all. 

He looked thicker across the shoulders and his chest wasn’t quite so thin under the parted edges of…my shirt. The one he’d called Billowy. 

Pro slipped quietly out through the french doors, leaving us to our reunion. I couldn’t move, hardly even registered the man’s departure, so consumed was I by the sight of Elio wearing my shirt and weeping beautifully. 

His gaping mouth reminded me of the first time we kissed, out on the Berm. His mouth had gaped then too and again the first time we’d slept together. Like he wanted to unhinge his jaw and swallow me whole, like he was gasping for something to fill his mouth with—fingers or a tongue or a cock, he wasn’t picky.

God, he was lovely. So achingly beautiful, standing there lined in light from the window. He was wearing the same patterned bathing suit he’d worn last summer, only he filled it out a little more fully this year. 

It seemed like a moment since I’d seen him and a lifetime. Still, he didn’t move. Just stood, staring and weeping and gaping, in the doorway. 

The fear began to creep back. My arms ached for him. I would have traded anything to be able to wrap myself around him, to crawl inside his body and never come out.

Still, he didn’t move.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably the actual last chapter....JK
> 
> So I'm definitely posting another chapter for this...It needs an epilogue. 
> 
> Will come back and edit this for typos later. (this chapter was difficult to write. I did three different rewrites of it.)

“Elio…” He finally breathed.

The sound of his own name on his lips, so like the first time, made me dizzy. I think I might have started crying myself. “Oliver.”

Between one breath and the next, he was in my arms and I was home. I wanted nothing more than to sink to the floor, wrapping around him, and stay that way for as long as he would let me. I longed to crawl inside his heart and shelter there or tuck him inside mine to protect him from the caprices of life.

Was there even a place for me there anymore? After what I’d done to him? How I’d abandoned him?

The feeling of his ribs under my hands and the scent of sun and sea and _Elio_ in his hair was enough. If this was the last moment I ever spent with him, if he banished me back to the US, away from him, it was enough.

“God. What are you doing here? When did you arrive?” He pulled back, hands coming up to my face. “Why did no one tell me? Where’s your wife?”

The stupidly wide smile that I managed through both my tears and the shudders of pure emotion that wracked my frame fell away. What was he talking about? “My…wife?”

His eyes dropped away, but his grip on me didn’t falter. “The last time we spoke, you told me you were getting married.”

I exhaled, could see the pain in his face. His beautiful, expressive face. “Your father…He didn’t tell you any of it. My God.”

This time, he pulled back, hurt surfacing in the back of his eyes. “No one does, not any more. They treat me like I’d made of glass. Like I’m a fledgling with a broken wing. But I’m not. I’m fine. Just tell me. I won't mind. Where is she? Did she come with you? Is she pregnant, is that it? Is that why you’re here?”

“ _Elio_ ,” I interrupted and he fell silent with a painful looking swallow. “Elio. I’m not married. Liz and I…we split months ago. Soon after we spoke last. She’s not here.”

His eyes jerked up to mine and he stared again. “You…” He exhaled.

“Me.”

He huffed a small, but breathless laugh at that. “How long are you staying?”

It was my turn to swallow painfully. I felt acutely aware of every part of my body, of how much space I was talking up, of how much distance was between us. “I…uh. I’m staying for as long as you want me to.”

He blinked and then smiled at that. It was a cutting, bitter thing and sat poorly on his face. “I doubt it.” I must have made some sort of inquiring noise, because he shook his head and continued, “If I had a choice, you’d never go.”

I couldn’t stop the little grin that curled at the edge of my mouth. There was warmth inside my chest for the first time in so long, like stepping out of a dank, windowless room into the summer sun. “Then I’ll stay forever and never go. Elio, you are my life, my love, my heart…And you control every part of me. Bid me to die and I will. Or tell me to go and I’ll do that too. Whatever you want from me is yours.”

Later, his eyes would light and he would laugh and ask, “Herrick?”and I would shrug at him, like he’d done so often to me, as if to say _what can you do_ or _I couldn’t help it_. But the sentiment was no less true for having been borrowed from another and he knew it. I could see then that knew it. It was in the lines of his body suddenly and the pattern of his breathing.

“And if I bid you never to leave me again. To stay here, by my side, for the rest of your life or mine? What then?

“You know that that’s what I’ll do.”

He shook his head again and turned to look out the window. The space between us yawned. Pain welled in my chest, making my hands clench. I wanted to reach out and pull him into my arms, but there was an invisible line his turning away had created between us. A trip wire that I could not cross. “I don’t know anything, Oliver. I told you. Not about what matters. Not about us, you.” 

I couldn’t bear the hurt that lay beneath his words, couldn’t bear having him so far away from me. Helplessness left me adrift and I ached for the feeling of _home_ again. “Here’s what I know…” I said, voice low. “I know that I love you.” He made a soft wounded noise and turned back to me. “I know that I've forgotten how to live without you. I spent the last year dying by inches and the hole you left in me felt like my soul.”

Elio crashed into me, sending me stumbling back against the desk. He seemed to trying to burrow his way inside me, his arms wound tightly around my neck. I would have let him try, wanted him to, wanted him to dig his nails into my chest, my muscles, my bones, to try to open my rib cage just to see what was beneath. Once, a lifetime ago or before last summer, that desire would have frightened me. The same desire that had driven me to each his peach. Now, it seemed the most natural thing I could imagine. That Elio be inside my body, that not a single cell of him should ever die, unless it were inside me. 

One of his legs settled between my thighs. He made a choked sound and reached up to tug me into a gaping kiss. Just like last summer in Rome, on the Berm, in our bedroom upstairs. I fell into him like a starving man at a feast, fully prepared to gorge myself on him for as long as he would allow.

When my hand wrapped around the back of his neck, my palm brushed his pulse and he shivered. His heart was rabbiting, beating so fast it seemed to throb against the thin flesh of his throat. I trailed a hand up and down his back, soothing. We traded kisses forever or for only a moment, I couldn’t tell. It was a heady, fragile thing, getting exactly what you’d been dreaming of, longing for for so long. I was afraid I might wake up back on the plane or at my apartment in New York. 

“Oliver,” He finally murmured against my lips. “Oliver, what do you want?”

I pulled back, my arms wrapping around his waist without my conscious decision to do it. “I want you. Only you. For all the rest of our lives. I want us to be like your Sonny and Cher couple who visited last summer. I want to love you until we’re both old and other people call us ridiculous. I want to follow you across the globe. I want whatever you’ll let me have.”

He reached up and ran a hand through his hair before trailing his fingers across him lips. “God. Yes, please. All of that. I told you last summer I just wanted to be with you. That hasn’t changed. But how? How could we manage it? You know that my parents know about us, Oliver. They—“

“Were the ones who invited me to spend the summer.” He blinked and his eyes widened. “Your father approves of us. Of me for you. He is the one who told me I could come back to you. He told me that you applied to conservatories.” Elio opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “I told him I’d follow wherever you led. It doesn’t matter where I am, as long as I’m with you, Elio.”

The joy in his face faded abruptly and he pulled away from me. I left him go, afraid that I’d ruined it, him, this. That I’d said too much, sounded too needy, too something to cause such a change. “I’m dreaming.”

I frowned at him. “What?”

He made a noise, bitter and raw, and shook his head. “You’d never say something like that to me. You’d never…want me like this. I’m dreaming again. I’ve fallen asleep on Marzia’s bed again and I’m dreaming.”

I flinched, the words hitting me like thrown knives. I swallowed hard against the return of the tightness to my throat.

“Marzia’s bed? Sleep there often?” As soon as the words had escaped, my entire body flashed cold. I had no right to say that to him, no right to the jealousy that soaked every syllable, but I couldn’t take them back now. I dropped my gaze away, can’t bear to look at him.

“What?” He sounded confused. I glanced back. He looked lost, staring at me with wide eyes. 

I inhaled, pressing my mouth into a tight line, trying to stem the words that were pressing to get out, the accusations _I could not make_ , the hurt that had never really gone away, even in Rome. “Do you often sleep in Marzia’s bed?”

He shook his head. “Not…often. Only sometimes in the afternoon, if I am too tired to bother coming home.”

He was being candid at least. I supposed that was something. Pro had implied on the phone that Elio hardly saw Marzia anymore. Clearly he’d been wrong. It didn’t matter. The pain, the jealousy, what Elio did when we weren’t together, none of it mattered, I wanted him anyway. I would follow him to hell if that’s where he led. And yet, I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t hold in the wounded noise that escape my throat. I was drunk off the emotional backlash, the swing from joy to bitterness and back again.

“Oliver?” He stepped forward again, took my face into his hands and titled it to him. I hadn’t realized I was crying again until I was forced to look at him through the tears. “My god. Oliver, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine. It’s fine.” My voice shook faintly, but didn’t break. I was drowning again. I could do this. I’d managed to spend an entire year drowning without sinking to the bottom. I could manage the rest of my life like this too, couldn’t I? If that’s what he wanted? There were no soaring bridges in this part of Italy at least.

“Tell me.”

“Don’t be a goose. I’m fine.”

“You’re crying, Oliver. I’ve never seen you cry before today. Tell me.” It was an order and one I couldn’t disobey.

“I…Are you in love with her? Marzia?” He shook his head, clearly bewildered, but didn’t speak. “What is it then? What is it that takes you back to her bed, her body? I was right there, last summer, and still it wasn’t enough. You…God, I loved you so desperately and it hurt so badly, knowing that you still took Marzia to bed, even after we’d started sleeping together. Will you keeping doing that? Or is there someone else now? Chiara? Her sister? Is it that you need a woman’s body to be satisfied? Is that why?”

He looked as though I’d cracked him open and gutted him. He seemed to have discarded the idea that he was dreaming, but in its place, there was such devastation that I couldn’t bear to look at his face. I pulled him back into my arms, needing to fix what I’d clearly broken between us, needing to bury my face against his neck to block out everything but him.

“No. No. No. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Oliver, Elio. I’m sorry.” He whispered it in my ear and my body went limp with it, _his own name_. “I never meant to make you feel that way. I was so stupid. I’m so sorry. I haven’t slept with Marzia since before Rome. I haven’t slept with anyone since you. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else’s hands touching me where you had. I couldn’t stomach the feeling of someone else buried inside me or me inside them, not if it wasn’t you. I’m sorry, Oliver. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I never realized. I'm sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I murmured over and over again, a bubble of elation swelling in my chest and pressing in on my lungs. “I love you.”

He pulled back after a minute and stepped away, taking my hand in his. “Let me show you. I promise you that for the rest of my life, yours will be the only body I ever take to bed. Let me show you how much I love you too. Let me…”

I followed him upstairs to our room and, upon finding my bags sitting in the corner near the dresser, knew that I’d finally righted the wrong I’d done in leaving him the previous summer. 

We had finally found each other. It was enough.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I surrender. This has become a whole things. I'm thinking maybe two more chapters? But It seems to be the prompt fill that keeps on giving so...maybe more.

I had thought that he’d led me upstairs to take me to bed. Bone-weary as I was, I wouldn’t have said no. I thought that even if I were on the brink of death, my body would still respond to Elio. 

But instead of undressing, he sat on the bed, right up against the headboard, and smiled at me. “Lie with me, Oliver.”

I couldn’t stop my eyelids from fluttering shut for a moment. I had forgotten how well he knew me, how aptly he had learned to read me last summer. The gesture filled the hole that I’d carried inside me since I’d left. 

I climbed onto the bed and settled at his hip, my head resting on his thigh. I wrapped my arms around him and felt him curl over me. One of his hand carded through my hair. 

There was something almost embryonic in the embrace, as though he were offering me his entire being to protect me from the rest of life. This was as close as I could come to inhabiting him, the way his already lived inside me. It was all so…big. Overwhelming. Beyond my brain to comprehend and yet my soul had no such confusion. I could feel my blood rushing through me and his pulse under his skin and I imagined opening my flesh and taking out my veins to connect them to his, so that there was no knowing what was mine and what was his. There was only ours. 

My breathing grew unsteady and my eyes prickled with tears. I wouldn’t cry again. I’d done that enough today. Enough for a lifetime. I was not a child to burst into tear so easily. I dug my fingers into his side and squeezed my eyes shut.

I silently vowed that I would not weep again and then promptly broke that vow when Elio began murmuring, “Mind this hour, it is your time, mine the mouth and yours the rhyme. Mine’s the mouth, though it is still, full of words that will not fill,” over and over. 

The words wrapped themselves around my heart, soothing the scars that my own actions had left there. The tears felt like relief, like shame, like tevilah. I hate that he was seeing me like this and I wanted him to see it, to have it, each any every part of me. I longed for him to lick the tears from my face and take them inside himself.

We lay there like that, Elio curled protectively over my body as my tears soaked into his swim suit and his skin.

There was movement in the house below when I finally moved to pull away. He caught my face, before I could pull back from him, and smile so softly at me that it bruised some newly healed part of me. “Close your eyes,” he whispered and I did.

There was a beat of stillness and then he ran his tongue, feather light, over the seam of my eyelids, tasting the remnants of me tears. 

I could have wept again, with the sheer joy of it. 

“Did you mean?” He breathed into my ear, tongue tracing its shell.

I couldn’t prevent the hitch in my breathing when he took my earlobe into his mouth and sucked at it. “Every word I’ve said today. Which, in particular were you wondering about?”

He was silent for a moment, so I opened my eyes to look at him. There was something fragile in his face, some echo of an ancient pain that he could not seem to believe was healing. 

I would never forgive myself for what I’d done to him.

“That you would follow me anywhere?”

“Yes.” I said, without even considering it. I didn’t care where he led. Seeing him again merely proved to me that Liz had been right. That my life without Elio in New York couldn’t have gone on. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it. I could bear anything, by Elio’s side.

“I want to attend Juilliard.” He did not look merely anxious. He looked ready to receive a crushing blow.

I nodded. “Alright. I can help you find an apartment or we could look for one together, if you…if you wanted to live together.”

He tilted his head, staring at me. “Is your apartment so small then?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s a two bedroom. Liz…It’s…We share the apartment.” 

He nodded his head once, looking away. “You don’t want me to know Liz? Will you…keep up with her?”

I wasn’t sure if he meant that to be a euphemism or not. I wasn’t sure where he was leading. “I would love for you to meet Liz. She wouldn’t allow us to live in New York…or anywhere in America at all, without demanding to meet you. That’s not it. It’s…Elio…” I ran a hand through my hair. I could not figure out how to explain this without him being insulted by it, either on my behalf or on his own. “Look, I refuse to make you dependent on me by asking you to move into my apartment. If you’d be willing to live with me, we’ll find something new. Together. That’s ours, the we decorate together, the we furnish together. Or I’ll help you find your own place, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

He narrowed his eyes. Never a good sign. I braced myself. “What do you mean ‘make me dependent on you’? What are you talking about?”

I took a deep breath. His face was tight, the cords in his neck rigid with how hard he was clenching his jaw. “I’m…You’re…You’ll be moving to a new city, in a new country, starting at a new school. Your family will be half a world away. You know no one in New York, except me. You’re so young. I won’t…I refuse to…” I looked at him helplessly, not knowing exactly how to finish my sentence.

He filled in the blanks for me. “You think that by moving into your apartment, you’d be…what? Coercing me somehow? Because I’m only 18? What does that have to do with anything? Oliver…I’ve traveled before. I’ve been all over Europe. The summer before you came to us, I spent two months living in hostiles in Paris. I’m not a child. I’m not naive. I’m not sheltered. You think I am because you’ve only known me here. This place…” He waved his hand around. “This place is not the real world. This place is… _heaven_ , you weren’t wrong. But I spend most of my year in Milan. I know what it’s like to live in a city. Milan is not New York, but…Just…don’t treat me like a child. You’ve never done before. I couldn’t bear it if you started now.”

“No, no, no, no.” I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant…Or it’s exactly what I meant. Elio. You need…You need a space that’s yours. In New York. Only yours. Why are you so insistent on moving into my apartment? I don’t care about it. I won’t mind moving in the slightest.”

He looked away, out the window. “I…Are you ashamed of me, Oliver?”

The words hit me in the face like a slap, stinging and just as liable to leave a bruise. “Why…Why would you ask that?”

He swallowed and I watched his Adam’s apple bob. The skin of his throat was smooth and pale. God he was beautiful. How could anyone ever be ashamed of him?

“I’m…you’re right. I’m very young. You’re a university professor. I’m going to be a freshman. Sometimes, I feel like you’re a world away from me and no matter how far I reached, I’ll never stretch out enough to touch you.”

Even though it was clear that the words were directed inwards, they pierced me chest like arrows. “Do you…” I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t… “Am I too old, Elio? Do you not…Do you—“

“No! My god. That’s not what I meant.” He sighed and reached for my hand. “Why can’t we talk to one another? Oliver. I love you. All I want, all I’ve ever wanted was to be with you. But how will you introduce me to your friends? What about your parents? How…New York isn’t Bergamo. It’s not here. It’s…No one knows me there. No one…I’m…I’ll be just…a kid.”

He said it like it was the worst possible thing he could be called. He said it like he’d never heard the words that people hurled at men like he and I, even though I knew that to be false. I knew that he himself had thrown that kind of insult before. Irony is often cruel. 

I considered what he was saying, suggesting. How it would look from the outside, to people who didn’t know us. I couldn’t introduce him to my coworkers, not most of them anyway, but that was more to do with the fact that he wasn’t a woman than it did with his age. 

I had very few real friends. Just Liz and Elenor who lived in New York. I had a couple of friends from back home who could go fuck themselves if they didn’t like him or us together.

“See.” His voice was flat. I’d taken too long to consider it. 

“No, I don’t see. Elio, I’m not sure what you’re imagining, but I don’t have hoards of friends. The only two people I would care about the opinion of have already heard an earful about you. Liz and Elenor will both love you. I…I won’t be able to introduce you to my coworkers, not properly. Not as…my partner, but it’s nothing to do with your age. I teach philosophy. It’s an old boys club. They aren’t the most tolerant bunch. Although, as long as we don’t explicitly say what our relationship is to them, they can’t do anything about vague suspicions. If they fire me, I’ll take them to court.” I offered him a half-smile, trying to ignore the queasiness in my stomach at the mere thought of it. “As for my parents? I won’t introduce you.”

He looked gutted. “So you are ashamed.”

I shook my head again. I felt a bit like a bobble head. “No. I’m not on speaking terms with either of them. They don’t get the privilege of meeting you. I won’t let them…tarnish you.”

He blinked and his expression softened. “Oh, Oliver.” He leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to my mouth. “Alright. We’ll find an apartment in New York together. Somewhere big enough to put a baby grand?”

I snorted. “I’m not sure I have the funds for that. Pricing in New York are disgustingly high.”

He grinned at me. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. I turned 18 this passed December.”

I blinked at the non-sequitur and frowned at him.

“My grandfather left me…some money in his will, but I couldn’t use it until I turned 18. I was going to use some of it to buy a piano for wherever I moved to, but Mama told me a few days ago that they’re buying me the piano as a congratulations. I wasn’t sure at the time what it was a congratulations of, but now I think it might be you.”

I laughed, breathless at the thought. “I envy you. Your parents are…absolutely unbelievable.” 

He shrugged as if to say _parents_. He didn’t realize how lucky he was. If he ever had the misfortune to meet my father…I prayed that he didn’t.

He paused a moment, hesitant, and I watched as a blush crept into his cheeks. I wanted to taste it. I wanted to chase it down his chest and see if I could get his cock to blush the same dark red. “They can be your parents now too. Couldn’t they?”

I was so distracted by the rising tide of lust that it took me a moment to process what he’d said. When I finally managed it, my eyes snapped up to his and I froze. 

I’d already said it myself, on the phone. Pro treated me like a son-in-law. But I never thought that Elio might consider…That he…I couldn’t think properly. Fragments of thoughts and sentences looped around in my head as Elio sat staring at me with increasing worry. “Is that too much? It’s too much, isn’t? I’m sorry. I’ll just…I’ll…”

The fissure of panic, of humiliation, in his voice shook me from my stupor. “Do you mean it? Do you…You sound like…God, Elio. You’re making that sound like a marriage proposal.”

He flushed deeper and turned away. After a moment that I spent simply looking at him without actually thinking any coherent thing, he said, “I know we can’t get married. Not here or in America. I know that. It doesn’t matter. Oliver…last summer you slipped inside my body and now you inhabit it as if it were your own. You exist in twice. In me and in you. There is no me without you. So what is marriage to that? I am Oliver and you are Elio or we are at once Elio-Oliver and share one soul between us.”

I dragged him into my arms and buried my face in his hair. He melted against me, with a soft whimper. 

How had I ever managed to walk away from this? How had I been so stupid?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feedback is much appreciated.
> 
> Prompts are fun too!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is like the 5th draft of this chapter. It was really difficult to write. It didn't want to settle itself.

That second summer with Elio was even more surreal than the first. It seemed to last forever. Even now, there is a hazy quality to my memories, as though someone blurred their edges together, making the summer one long and beautiful day. I loved the villa, the summer breezes, Pro and Annella, Manfredi and Mafalda and Anchise. I even loved Marzia and Chiara and Matteo, because they were all part of Elio. 

Elio and I spent most of the summer learning and relearning each other. Now that his parents and the rest of the household knew what we were about, we made no effort to hide our affection. We could often be found, laying in _heaven_ , Elio flat on his back with me draped over him.

I felt safe and content in the circle of his arms, which was a novel experience for me. Most people take my comfort and self-confidence for granted because I am accustomed to being the tallest person in any given room. Because of my stature and muscular frame, all my previous partners, male and female, had assumed that I was a dominant lover, that my strength and my control were owed to them because they were smaller than I was. Until Elio, I had never been allowed to take a more submissive role, never offered a space to surrender my control. 

Marzia started calling me _le petit chien_ , mockingly at first, but with what eventually became affection. She claimed, when asked about it, that I loped around with the enthusiasm of an oversized puppy, but I think perhaps it had more to do with how I followed Elio as though tied to him with an invisible leash. I left sometimes like a small dog, yapping at his heels, though he never seemed annoyed by it and never pushed me away. 

With Elio, I was more myself than with anyone I’d ever met in my life. 

One particular beautiful night in July, we snuck out of the house, just after midnight, and took our bikes to the Berm. We stripped out of our clothing and went for a moonlit swim. That was all I’d planned on doing, content to watch the silver light glimmer off Elio’s wet skin, but he had different plans. Ducking below the waterline, he took me into his mouth to make me hard. Not that that was ever necessary, since just the thought of his naked body was usually enough to send all my blood rushing south. I’d nearly jumped out of my skin when I’d felt slick fingers brush my hole, however, and Elio had jerked back. He’d surfaced, cheeks pink with embarrassment and tried to apologize. “We don’t have to. I didn’t…I…I’m sorry. If you don’t want—“

I shook my head at him and pulled him against, feeling his cock brush my hip. “You surprised me. Of course, I want it. I miss the ache. For the first month I was back in the States, just remembering the bus ride to Bergamo made me hard. You’re the only one who’s ever been inside me. Of course, I want that again.”

I could hear the faint sound of him swallowing before I stepped back and tugged him to the natural steps at the edge of the Berm. I braced my hands on the stone, spread my thighs wide, and tilted my ass up, hoping I didn’t look quite as ridiculous as I thought I did. 

Elio whined, high and hungry in the back of his throat and his fingers curled over my hips with a bruising force. My breath stuttered at the feeling. 

His hands were one of my favorite places on his body. I loved their strength and elegance and the way they looked playing the piano. I loved how his fingers felt inside me and the way they looked fisting the blankets.

He took me apart that night, with those long fingers of his, right against the bank of the Berm. The bike ride back was wobbly and slow and I spent most of it standing on my peddles to avoid the seat. 

I was still loose when we collapsed onto our bed at the villa, so Elio coated his cock and slipped back into me, gentle this time, and the orgasms that followed were sweet and syrupy as honey, just like the rest of the summer.

Sprinkled in among the languid days were more practical concerns. 

Elio accepted the offer that Juilliard had made to him, securing his funding and his spot in the program. His excitement grew as the summer progressed. 

The month before I’d left for Italy, I’d had my degree conferred and so I was now officially Dr. Oliver Arenson. I’d managed, with a lot of eye-straining work, to complete my doctoral program is just three years. I had been offered a permanent teaching position at Colombia, securing my own place in the city. Elio had dragged me into a celebratory spin when we’d opened the forwarded letter and had pressed himself against my back while I’d made the phone call to the States to accept it.

We’d agreed that I’d fly back to New York on the first of August and he’d fly out the following weekend, since it would give us time to find an apartment together and furnish it before our classes began in the fall. The few days alone with his parents would give him a chance to say goodbye properly before he left. 

The thought of leaving him behind again, if only just for a few days, wrapped itself anxiously around me. It would make itself known at odd moments in those last few weeks before I left, making me feel as though I’d been asleep the whole summer long and was only now waking groggily. That I’d go back to New York and get a call from Elio telling me that he’d changed his mind, that he no longer wished to move in together, that he no longer even wished to see me. The night before I was to take the train in to the airport, I was jerked awake by a dream so vivid I would have swore it was a memory or a premonition. 

I had been in my apartment in New York, packing boxes in preparation for moving when the phone rang. I’d picked it up and on the other end Elio had launched right into a speech without waiting for me to say hello. He wasn’t going to be looking for apartments with me. He didn’t want to live with me. He didn’t want to even see me again. The entire summer had been a mistake, of course it had been. What had he been thinking, getting involved with me and wasting the final summer before college? He could have been sleeping with Chiara or Marzia again or Matteo or Ivan who lived on the other side of Crema. In fact, he had been sleeping with with them all summer long, when he’d said he was running errands in town. When he’d claimed to be napping. He just didn’t know how to tell me that he didn’t want me, couldn’t stand the feel of my hands on his body, couldn’t stomach touching me anymore. 

I’d woken up with tears running down my face, gasping and clutching at the sheets. Elio was up in an instant, pulling me into his arms and asking gentle questions that I didn’t answer. 

My impending departure was bringing up all the emotional turmoil that I’d never actually resolved when I’d arrived. Instead of confronting it like I should have, like the adult I was, like Elio has suggested so gently and with such compassion, I’d merely pushed it all aside, thinking that maybe being with Elio again would cure it. 

Ignoring it had cured nothing. I felt like I’d been sucked back into the crushing vice that had been my constant companion in New York. Maybe it was the thought of the city itself or maybe it was the reassumption of the my responsibilities in the city. I wasn’t sure. I hoped it was, because if it was that even leaving Elio for a scant few days brought this back out in me, I was going to have to see someone. Was my sense of self, of safety, of peace so dependent on Elio now that I couldn’t manage it survive without him for a week?

I pulled away, dug my hands into my hair, and tried to calm my racing heart. 

“Oliver. Talk to me. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s happening. Just tell me.”

Could I tell him? I could still feel the after-taste of safety lingering on my tongue, from long days spent cradled against his chest by the pool. Could I crack myself open and let him see what was hidden in the deepest corner of my soul? Would he even want me to?

“Please, don’t shut me out. Please, Elio.”

His own name on his lips undid me. We only called each other by our own names rarely, when one of us needed the other to know he was loved. I swallowed, harsh and loud in the quiet of the room.

“I don’t…I’m scared. I’m terrified. It’s been getting worse for the last few days and I don’t know how to control it. I can’t make it go away.” I couldn’t look at him, simply sat with my hands buried in my hair and stared at the sheets covering our legs.

Elio shifted closer. “What are you afraid of?” His voice was soft, but edged with something. Concern?

I shook my head. “I don’t…I don’t know. Everything? Nothing? Losing you? New York? My Job, my friends, my parents, your new life there, your friends, life? I can’t…it’s like a dream. The entire summer has been like the loveliest dream I’ve ever had. I’m terrified that New York will wake us up. That you’ll walk away, find someone new who’s closer to your age or better suited to your interests or better looking. That you’ll change your mind about New York entirely. Or worse, that you’ll move to New York and never want to see me again and I’ll have to go back to my life knowing that you’re in the city, in my city, and yet farther away than you’ve ever been. That my parents will turn up out of the blue one day and tear us apart with their hatred. That Colombia will find out and I’ll lose my job and we’ll end up on the streets because I’m such a failure. That I’ll destroy us somehow. That I’ll drag you down with me. That…That…” I couldn’t continue. There wasn’t enough air in the room. My lungs were tight and still in my chest and my stomach rolled.

“Oh…Oliver…” Elio’s voice was shattered. He reached across the space and wrapped me in his arms. “Look, there’s nothing I can say about some of that, but I can promise you this. I swear to you, there is nothing that anyone can do that would tear us apart. Not your parents, not my friends, not my new program or your job. If they fire you? I’ll pay our rent. I don’t want anyone else. I don’t want someone my age and there is no one who matches me better than you. Oliver…I don’t understand where this insecurity came from. You’d think it would be me worried about all this. We’re going to be okay. I love you. Je t’aime, Ti amo, ich liebe dich. I adore you. We’ve found the stars, you and I. We managed to find that tiny spark of stardust that that is given to each person only once in their lives. We won’t squander it. I won’t let us. You are me and I am you and we are us, together. Do you understand? Oliver, I would follow you to the edges of the map and beyond, if only to spend the rest of my life and yours together.”

His words shredded me to ribbons and I was bleeding, but it was a good thing. Like leeches. Cleansing, purifying. My lungs eased a little and I could gasp in ragged breaths again. 

“Okay.” I said, with every gasp. “Okay.”

It was only a few days, after all. I could manage a few days without Elio. 

I promised myself and him that I would find a therapist, someone to talk to, as soon as I got to New York. I couldn’t continue like this. I couldn’t do that to Elio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts and responses always appreciated :D
> 
> Requests too.


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